The Wand
by Colubrina
Summary: Draco Malfoy is hired by the Ministry to track down a missing relic worth killing for. Hermione Granger might be his best lead, or might be behind the string of bad luck that trips up anyone who goes near the thing. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1 - An Old Acquaintance

The streetlamps went out easily enough. One click and the warm pools of light drained away. It took a moment for Draco's eyes to adjust, and when they did the much cooler glow of the full moon wrapped around each curve of the old cobblestones. It wasn't hard to see.

The windows of the bookshop still gleamed, golden and filled with the promise of _Shakespeare _and _New & Used_ and also _Coffee_. Hermione looked about the same as she had the last time he'd seen her, or wholly different. Time did that to a woman. Draco supposed time had done it to him as well, but the years looked better on her. Her schoolgirl's bushy hair had been tamed into an elegant twist. Her legs went on forever. Long, narrow fingers turned the pages of some part of her own stock. If she'd been anyone else, he'd have turned on his charm at the sight of her. Asked her if maybe she had a copy of some book she was sure to lack. Give himself an excuse to come back, time after time, until a quick stop became an excuse to linger for coffee. Until coffee became the bed. He'd like to see that hair down, like to see the red painted lips that pursed together over something she was reading open up and gasp.

But she wasn't someone else, and he was here on a job.

His shoes made no sound as he crossed the dark street. When he opened the door, she didn't even look up. "We're closed, mister," she said. "Come back tomorrow."

"Well, now," Draco said in the drawl he knew she'd recognize, "that's not what your sign says."

Hermione's head jerked up, and for a brief moment, shock entered her eyes, and maybe a tiny bit of fear, though he could be imaging that, could be seeing what he wanted to see. Or, knowing her, seeing what she wanted him to. "Malfoy," she said. Her hands didn't tremble as she set down the book, marking her place with a strip of old parchment. He could see the writing on it in her neat, measured letters. Could see the brand on her Muggle cigarettes as she picked up the package, pulled one out, and lit it with a murmured charm. She took a long drag, and he let her steady her nerves. No point driving her to run.

"That sign," she said and took another drag. "I told Lavender to turn it when she left. Serves me right for not checking."

"You never can know what the cat will drag in," he agreed. He leaned against the counter and watched her. Smoking was ugly on most women, but on Hermione, it drew his eyes to her mouth

Another drag. "How've you been, Malfoy?" she asked. "Still married?"

"Disappointed or pleased if I'm not?"

"Unsurprised, more like. You never struck me as the faithful sort."

"How about yourself? How's Ronald?"

Ronald, who Draco knew lay in a shallow grave outside Hogwarts.

Hermione stubbed out the cigarette and rose to her feet. "I haven't seen Ron in years," she said. "Since you were last sniffing around, if you must know. What can I help you with, Malfoy? I can give you his sister's address, if you're still carrying that torch."

"I wouldn't turn it down," he said. Her high heels clacked on the wooden floor of her shop as she brushed past him and bent down under the counter to fetch paper and quill. She seemed to search around for a rather longer bit of time than Draco'd expect her to take to find something so simple. He inhaled the scent of her perfume – French, he thought – and admired the curve of her arse while he waited. When she straightened, scrawled out an address on the torn bit of parchment she'd scrounged up, and handed it over, he let his fingers brush against her wrist.

"I've missed you, Granger."

Her brows lifted.

"I have a reason for stopping by, though," he said, pocketing the address he'd never use. Hermione's smile curved up knowingly. She always had thought she could read people. Always thought she knew everything that was going on. Time hadn't improved that about her. "Ministry asked me to help them out on a little problem they're having. Something they can't do through regular channels."

"Naturally, if they asked you."

"You aren't curious what it is?"

"I assume since you've come crawling back, looking for help, you'll tell me."

"Potter's gone missing."

. . . . . . . . . .

**_A/N – Terribly short, and I'm not at all sure I'll go on, so in all ways this is a hateful posting, but I hope you enjoy it anyway._**


	2. Chapter 2 - A Night Out

"Harry's a grown adult," Hermione said. She pulled out her wand and began closing down the shop. One light after another went out, her ashtray emptied itself, several books slid back onto their shelves. "He is allowed to come and go as he pleases."

"They're afraid he might be in just a spot of trouble."

"If it's Harry, it's more like a full-on stain that'll ruin your suit than a spot," Hermione said, and she had a point. The sort of man who came out from war a hero wasn't the sort who tended to sit back and read the advice columns on Sunday. Harry always got into the thick of things. Still, he'd always been her friend, or she'd been his, and Draco figured if there was any way to get Hermione Granger's attention, it was with Harry.

"He went up north with some friends, so he said around the office. One fellow down in the mailroom said he thought Potter looked nervous. I can't think why that would be, can you?"

"Maybe he had a large bet on a losing Quidditch team," Hermione suggested wryly. She pulled a new looking handbag out from under her counter, a sharp little thing that was all hard leather and an expensive label. Draco hadn't realized selling books was quite so lucrative. "Do you want to get a drink, Malfoy?"

"You buying?"

"No," she said. "You are."

They talked about polite sorts of nothing for the first round. School chums they pretended to remember fondly, and a bit of salacious gossip that had come out in the papers that morning. The second round covered his divorce, though he spent most of it thinking about the way Hermione's blouse hugged her figure. Something about good tailoring, he was certain. It brought out interesting lines in a woman's top half the same way high heels did for the bottom half. After the third, Hermione picked up her purse and waited expectantly.

"Granger?"

"Three is my limit at a pub," she said, "and if Harry's really gone and gotten himself into a mess, I'll have to help you, and I'll need to be quite drunk before I can face that. Are you coming?"

Draco was pleasantly surprised to find she had good whiskey at her flat, and proper lowballs. She poured the fourth round and the fifth, and when she paused in the doorway of her bedroom, he thought this was going much too easily. The Hermione Granger of yore would have made him work much harder to weasel his way into her good graces. Not that he planned to spend too much time looking for the cloud in this silver lining. That time, he thought, was much better spent discovering she shopped for lingerie with the same attention to detail she spent on blouses and shoes.

When he woke up in the morning, sunlight assaulted his face. He shaded his eyes and then narrowed them. Hermione sat fully dressed in an upright chair by the bed, one long leg crossed over the other, the contents of his jacket spread out in front of her. She met his furious gaze. "Is this a summons for letting your apparition license expire?" She waved that exact summons in the air. "Tsk."

"I was always told a lady wouldn't go through a gentleman's pockets."

'I can't imagine how that would have any bearing on your life." Hermione continued to pick up his things with seeming idleness, running her fingers over check stubs, a pack of matches, and the folded note he'd taken from Weasley's pocket. Fortunately, that was even less incriminating than the summons. Draco's head suffered more than the usual post-whiskey pain, but he sat up and accioed his pants and trousers. Let the witch go through his jacket if she wanted. She wouldn't find anything there.

"Did we?" he trailed off expectantly. He was naked in her bed. It seemed reasonable to assume they'd picked up where they'd left off.

She tossed the jacket at him casually. "If you don't remember things you do after you've been drinking, I suggest you try having less," she said. "How long will it take you to get ready to go up north?"

"By the time you brew coffee, I'll be ready," he said. Damn her for being already up with no signs of a headache, perfectly pressed trousers clinging to her like a vine. She'd even done her hair.

"I don't make coffee," she said.

"Try."

She accioed a pair of sensible shoes that managed to be flat and stylish at the same time, looked at him for a long, cool moment, then smiled. "No."

She shut the door to her bedroom on the way out, those shoes in hand, and Draco threw one of his own at the door. He should have taken up politics, the way his father had wanted. It would have been a more honest way to make a living, and the company would have been better.

"Or I could not help," she called out after his shoe bounced off her door and landed on the floor.

Draco swiped a pain potion from the bedside table and began to dress as quickly as he could.

. . . . . . . . . .

**_A/N – I couldn't resist going on, though I've made a structural choice to write the fic in very short, choppy chapters. If that's not your thing, I understand. Just wait until it's complete if you are interested in reading it._**


	3. Chapter 3 - A Spot of Tea

Draco had never liked Madame Puddifoot's Tea Shop. The pink. The frills. He was not at all surprised, therefore, that it was the first place Hermione set her sights on when they arrived in Hogsmeade. The sun beat down relentlessly as they walked from the apparition site. It reflected off the window panes of shops and tried to blind him. Birds chirped. Children ran down the street, shrieking loudly. It was far too early to be up, and Draco resented the necessity.

"Harry always liked this place," Hermione said. She waited for Draco to get the door for her which, begrudgingly, he did. "Sweet tooth, you know. If he's been up here, they'll have seen him."

Draco had no such faith, and her claim was a bit at odds with his own recollections of the man, but he let the waitress point them toward a table toward the back of the cramped shop right next to the loo. Give people a long enough leash, and they usually led you where you wanted to go, even if they took a few detours along the way. This detour wasn't at all to his taste, but that was the way things went. The table was sticky, and the menu was sticky, and, worse, all it contained was a selection of teas and pastries. Draco hunted for anything with a spot of whiskey in vain. When he looked up, Hermione was frowning at a dollop of forgotten jam. The strawberry red clashed with pink of the table. "I'm going to ask them to clean this up."

He watched her walk to the counter, purse in hand, hips sashaying back and forth. It was a sight to admire.

"I thought your taste ran more to upper-class birds who talked with a lisp."

"Goyle," Draco said. Goyle's complexion had the sallow tones of a man whose liver's decided to take up working part-time. His suit was baggy, his shoes unshined. Draco had no trouble seeing the lines of a wand in his pocket. "You look well."

Goyle sat down in Hermione's abandoned seat. If he was cognizant of the table's unwashed condition, he didn't show it. "I am, thank yous. Not so well as that one you're eyeing, what with her arse sticking up in the air like that, but what happened to your wife? Drastoria, was it? Or you just looking to add a little variety?"

"No," Draco said a bit tightly. "And it's Astoria. And she prefers to stay in the south of France now, preferably without me."

"She always did have good taste."

Draco's razor smile didn't waver, but he set his hand on his own wand. "How are things?" he asked. He hadn't thought about his Greg Goyle since Hogwarts, and, in retrospect, wasn't sure they'd ever been friends. He was inclined to doubt it.

"They come, they go," Goyle said easily. "I've been up here on a little Scottish hunting trip. Take a few days off, get out of the city, see what you can flush out. You know the drill."

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," Draco agreed. "See anyone interesting while you were up here. Harry Potter, maybe?"

"Not the circles I run in. Not him, not his mates neither. You though…" Goyle tipped his head toward Hermione, and Draco took the opportunity to let his eyes linger on her. She was leaning over the counter, head close to that of a girl in a pink apron. He'd seen that head tilt a thousand times on women. They were whispering their secrets. Hermione twisted to look back at him, and both women smiled.

'That," Goyle said, "I wouldn't have expected. Why you up here?"

"A hunting trip of a different sort," Draco said. "See what I can catch."

Goyle laughed. One side of his mouth drew up higher than the rest. "Bird hunting?" he asked.

"Something like that." So far all he'd caught was a corpse and a clue, but maybe he'd get lucky today. Or tonight. Hermione was walking back to the table, and she stopped to hold her hand out to Goyle.

"Hermione Granger," she said.

Goyle stood and bowed low over her hand before placing lips that looked moist against her skin. "Charmed," he said. "We knew each other though, Granger. Back in school. Greg Goyle."

Her eyes widened, one lid twitching ever so slightly. "I wouldn't have known you," she said. "It's been so long."

"And I'll be leaving so you two can enjoy your tea," Goyle said. His lips curled in what he might have thought was a smile. "Don't trust nothing this one says to you, Granger. He'd lie to God himself."

"I'll keep that in mind." Hermione sat down and opened a menu. Draco was sure he saw her discretely wipe the back of her hand against her trousers, and Greg had lumbered his way to the loo before she spoke again. "They have seen him," she said. "He was up here a few days ago, she thought he was going to visit McGonagall. He does that now and again, so she didn't think twice about it."

"That's good, then," Draco said. He went to pick his menu back up again and dragged his white sleeve through the jam. The blood red soaked into the fabric. "Damn it," he muttered.

Hermione pulled her wand and charmed away both jam and stain. She'd always been clever. Draco had to admit that.

"So we'll just ask McGonagall why he was here," Draco said.

Hermione smile wavered for a moment. "Yes," she said. "Of course."


	4. Chapter 4 - A Visit to School

Minerva McGonagall did not remember any visits from Harry in the past few days. "But Ronald was up," she said. She smiled at Draco and Hermione both and Draco was reminded how terrified he'd been of this woman as a child. She still seemed sharp as a tack, but any lingering fear had transfigured itself to grudging admiration. There were good people in this world, and some of them dedicated themselves to the thankless task of grinding education into a stream of perpetually ungrateful brats.

Personally, he preferred to be thanked for things he did, and the best thanks came in the form of galleons. But then, he had no illusions he was what anyone would call good.

"Ronald?" Hermione looked nonplussed, and Draco couldn't blame her. Ron Weasley didn't seem the sort to take time to toddle on up to Scotland and have tea with elderly schoolmarms.

"Yes." McGonagall's eyes narrowed in clear response to Hermione's confusion, and Weasley was a line of thinking Draco did not want either of them exploring. That would lead to questions, and he didn't care for questions that didn't end with either a drink or the suggestion that clothing more properly belonged on the floor of his bedroom.

"Maybe he came up with Potter," Draco said.

Hermione darted a glance at him, and for the first time since he'd told her Potter was missing, she looked concerned. The easy lines of her brow pulled together, and her lips pursed. "Where did he say he was going?" she asked.

"He wanted permission to go into the Forbidden Forest."

Which meant, of course, that was exactly where they had to go. Draco cursed his luck as Hermione strode off, winding her way through the endless stone corridors of the school. In ordinary circumstances, if a man wanted to find Potter, Weasley was an excellent first stop, but Weasley had already gone on, and there was no catching him now and asking for directions. Not unless a man wanted to toy with the sort of magic only a fool would use. And Draco was a lot of things, but he wasn't a fool.

The Ministry now, that was a place run by fools, but a smart man didn't ask his employer all that much.

"I don't think the Forbidden Forest is an especially good idea," he said, hurrying to catch up with Hermione. "I'm quite certain Potter isn't there."

"Really?" Hermione stopped and met his eye. Draco suspected he was supposed to squirm under that cool gaze, but he'd faced far worse monsters than his own lies before. He met her eyes squarely. "I thought you weren't at all sure where Harry was."

"I'm not," Draco said, which was a rare bit of honesty. "But it's getting dark, and that's not a good place to be at night."

"It's not even noon," Hermione said dismissively and turned away again. It didn't look like noon at the edge of the trees. The sun beat down over the village and over the school, but it shied away from the forest. Shadows pulled at their feet. Draco wiped at the sweat trickling down over his brow. Maybe the partial darkness would offer a respite from the unmercifully bright day. Between the morning hangover, running into Goyle, and now this hike across the Scottish countryside, Draco was rapidly losing what little appreciation he had for this day.

Hermione sat down on a rock, opened her handbag, and pulled out a pair of sturdy hiking books. She met his incredulous stare with nothing more than a slight tilt to her head. "I like to be prepared," she said.

Draco looked at the boots, then at her purse, and did an assessment of how big the first were versus how small the second was, and came to a quick conclusion. "Expansion charm," he said. "How did you get a permit for that?"

"I didn't."

And she had the nerve to get on his case about his overdue apparition license renewal, not that she'd said anything about it when they apparated up here. Draco shoved his hands down into his trouser pockets and ran his thumb over the deluminator he'd liberated from Weasley. "And you seem like such an honest woman, too," he said.

Hermione whisked the dirt away from her stylish flats with a single charm, then tucked them away into that leather bag. "If I were an honest woman, you wouldn't have asked for my help on your shady little project."

"Since when is looking for Harry Potter shady?" Draco asked.

"Since when are you looking for Harry?" she retorted, and walked briskly off into the Forbidden Forest, bag in one hand, wand in the other.

"I am looking for Potter," Draco protested, following her. It was unbelievable. She was accusing him about lying about the one thing he was being fully honest about.

Or at least partially honest.


	5. Chapter 5 - A Walk in the Woods

Draco much preferred urban life to the countryside. It wasn't that the city was free of predators. From the literal rats in the sewers to more metaphorical rats in the alleys, London had its share of dangers. But they were dangers he was comfortable with. He knew what to do when faced with a Greg Goyle or a corrupt Auror.

Now, an uncorrupt Auror might be a bit more of a challenge, but Draco Malfoy wasn't sure such a thing existed. He certainly had never encountered one.

Trees, however, were different than buildings, and no matter how closely they grew together, there was still far too much room for the various monsters that lived in these woods to hide. The further they walked, the darker it became until it felt like they were in an unending, dull green twilight.

"What do you mean, I'm not looking for Potter?" Draco demanded as he hurried to keep up with Hermione.

She shrugged but didn't stop walking. "The Ministry isn't going to hire _you_ to track down Harry, so it's not too much of a stretch to think you're looking for something – or someone – else."

Draco's pride tried to be stung at her contemptuous emphasis on _you_, as though the Ministry might have hired someone else to find their precious darling, but after a few futile attempts that pride gave up and settled back into a more comfortable state of unstung indifference. "You might have a point," he conceded, picking his way around a bush far too eager to grab at his trousers and hold on. He didn't strip down for random prickle bushes. A man needed standards. "It's possible Harry Potter is not my primary goal."

Hermione stepped far more nimbly over the local flora and stopped in a rare patch of sunlight. "You don't say," she said. She leveled her wand at him. "Now that we're out here alone, this might be a good time to dredge what passes for your brain and find the truth."

"You're not going to shoot me," Draco said. He kept his shoulders and arms loose and didn't pull his hands from his trouser pockets. His mind raced. Tackle her. Pull his own wand. Distract her. He had to do something, but letting her know he might be even a little concerned wasn't it.

Hermione's smile inched upward. She was one hell of a woman. The twist that held her hair hadn't dared to release so much as a single curl, not one bramble had snagged her blouse, her breasts moved up and down just a whit as she breathed, drawing his eyes. She wasn't breathing hard. "Do you want to try me?" she asked.

"Shoot me, and there'll be questions."

"People die in this forest all the time," she said. "I'll make sure to cry in an attractive way for the Aurors."

When she didn't budge, he stepped forward, moving fast. One hand grabbed her wrist and twisted it until she dropped her wand, the other bent her second arm behind her back, turning her until she was snug against him, unable to free herself. Her handbag fell, hitting the ground sideways and spilling out one shoe, a lipstick, and what looked like a romance novel.

"You bastard," Hermione said and raised a foot ready to slam it down into his instep.

Draco transfigured a nearby stump to a more stable rock and sat down, all in one breath. He pulled her onto his lap. "None of that," he said. He couldn't help but smile. "By God, I've missed you, Granger," he said.

"Not a mutual feeling," she said. "What are you after, Malfoy?"

"Right now?" He raised his brows. "I wouldn't object to a kiss."

Her mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. She stared at him, then, with a shake of her head, began to laugh. "You are unbelievable."

He tentatively released his grip on her, and, without his arm holding her in place, she began to tilt precariously toward the forest floor. He grabbed her again as quickly as he could – having his prime lead to Potter hit her head on some godforsaken rock was not in any plan – and her arms ended up around his neck, her face right next to his.

"Well," he said. "Hello there."

She tasted like strawberry jam and tea.


	6. Chapter 6 - A Discovery

Draco had kissed more than a few women in his time. He'd even been married once, though kissing Astoria had always felt a bit more like turning in an assignment than a pleasure. Hermione Granger, though, had always been the best of them. Not that he planned to tell her that, of course. He hadn't mentioned it back in the day when he'd shown up, bored and unmarried, and swept her off her feet. Or, at the very least, convinced her he had enough cash to pay for dinner.

Which had turned into dessert.

Which had turned into a quick trip to Antibes.

Where he'd left her for reasons that had seemed quite logical at the time. He hadn't been a _total_ bastard about it. He hadn't stranded her without money, for example. He'd left a pile of galleons on the nightstand that should have been more than ample to pay her way home, and he'd settled the hotel bill. And the restaurant bills. And even the bar bill. The cost of good wine in Antibes was high, too, so that hadn't been a small thing.

A few weeks later he'd gotten a package in the mail with every galleon he'd left her returned. The package hadn't had a note, but he'd known who it was from. If he hadn't, the way the owl tried to blind him would have been a hint.

And in the years since, he'd never found a woman who kissed the way she did. It was a pleasure to remember it. Hermione's hands wound around his neck, her body pressed into his, and her lips melted open. He'd measured girlfriends against her. Professionals. He'd measured his wife against her, and all had come up short. For a moment, it was bliss to hold her again, to breathe in the scent of her hair and skin, to taste her against his lips.

Then he pulled away. Her eyes weren't quite as distracted as he might have hoped. They measured him for a moment, before softening. "Perhaps I did miss you," she said. "Just a little."

"You usually have much better taste than that," he said.

"Well, everyone's allowed one lapse," she said. "Ron, for example, always liked this awful spotted dick his mother made."

Ronald. Right.

Draco helped Hermione back to her feet. He held his hand out for her to steady herself. He even reached to help gather the things spilled from her bag.

"I've got it," she said quickly, bending down to push book and shoes back.

When she straightened up, he smiled at her and rose to his own feet. "This," he said, "is the part where you lean oh so delicately against me, pretend to be fragile, and ask again what it is I'm looking for."

"You said you were looking for Harry."

"Which you, not totally unwisely, didn't believe," Draco said. "And I'd hate for you to waste such a thorough attempt at wiles. Best to strike now that you've softened me up. Or hardened me, as the case may be."

"Attempt?" Hermione sounded a bit put out by that.

"Attempt," Draco agreed. He began to pick his way through the woods. He wanted to wind back toward the opening, out into the daylight, and away from things like giant spiders and shallow graves, but Hermione had pulled out her wand and seemed to be casting a tracking spell. That would have been useful if tracking Ronald Weasley was something he wanted to do. As it was, it seemed like the very last charm he wanted her to work. "That's not going to find Potter," he said. "And I'm not looking for your ex."

"It could be awkward at the moment," Hermione said, "but where Ron is, Harry is rarely far behind."

That would be bad news, but Draco couldn't let her walk into this nightmare of a forest on her own, so he grimly kept face. He pushed one branch out of his face and ducked under another. The woods were dark and deep but not at all lovely. Whatever poets had taken the time to write about these wretched places had clearly never bothered to go on a hike in one themselves. Which was sensible of the poets. You could write just as easily from a warm room above a pub as you could from a place where something Draco couldn't identify scurried away from his shadow with a hiss.

"I don't think we're going to find anyone," he said. "We should go back."

She ignored him then, and ignored him again until the woods became familiar. Draco closed his eyes and braced himself for the inevitable.

"There must be something wrong with my charm," Hermione said. She was shaking her wand and staring at the upturned earth. He could tell she knew the truth. He could see it in the way her shoulders tensed, and the way her hand shook even as she levitated the dirt away.

She stared for a moment into the hole. Ronald had to be ugly by now. Time did terrible things to the dead, and Draco wished he could have spared her the sight. Wished she'd let him turn her away, back to London. She half-choked off her scream, then stumbled back, away from the body and into Draco Malfoy's waiting arms.


	7. Chapter 7 - A Few Revelations

Draco held on to her as she shook, and as the shaking turned to sobs. "Mind if I?" he asked in a bit with a sharp nod toward the grave, and he decided to take her sniffled nod as permission to rebury the corpse.

"You knew he was there," Hermione said. She pulled a little away from him, and wound her arm back to slap him – or maybe punch him right in the nose – and Draco caught her wrist.

"I'm willing to be cried on," he said. "Seeing the body of your ex-husband has to be a bit of a shock. But I draw the line at you hitting me."

She collapsed again at that. She pressed her face to his shoulder and muffled words poured out of her. "He was fine," she said, or maybe it was "thee as vine." Draco didn't interrupt her, but he listened with interest. "Just last week he was fine and, oh God, Harry, you were right."

Far be it for Draco to tell a woman to her face she'd lied to him, but he had the feeling Hermione had seen Ronald Weasley far more recently than the _last time you were sniffing around_ as she'd claimed.

He waited with what he felt was a remarkable about of patience for her to stop crying. When words faded out and even the tears became more shaky gulps and shudders, he turned her back toward the edge of the forest and began walking. She grabbed her handbag, fished out a handkerchief, and followed him. Good. She could mop her eyes on her own fabric instead of his much-beleaguered shirt. They'd found what she was looking for, despite his best efforts, and with that done he wanted to get out of here and maybe to a room in an inn for the night. He'd blame it on the lapsed apparition license, and God knew she was in no shape to move herself back to London. Or they could go back and drink there. But, either way, he wasn't staying here after dark.

"You knew," she said again. This time through the woods her feet stumbled and she seemed to find every upturned root to trip on. Time and again he had to let her grab his arm to steady herself. "You knew."

"I did," he agreed.

She stopped walking. "And you didn't say anything. Was it you who killed him?"

Draco snorted. "I'm not a murderer, Granger. I'm a man who finds things. Valuable things."

"Things like Harry?"

"Things like what Harry's got."

She clutched her bag against her chest. "Like what?"

"Like the Hallows."

She didn't say anything, and Draco kept walking. "Someone in the Ministry wants them. Wants them badly enough to hire me off the books and under the table, so to speak. They're priceless individually, and together, well – "

"They're a lie," Hermione said sharply. "They don't make you a master of death. They… they attract Death's attention is all."

"Well, someone wants them anyway," Draco said. He still felt a little bitter that he'd held one of the legendary objects and lost it. His agreement to take a Ministry job – always a bad idea – might have been influenced just in part by the urge to wrap his hands around that wand again. Even if it wasn't his, he'd like to feel, just for a moment, as if it were.

"And they're willing to pay," Hermione said.

"They're willing to kill," Draco corrected her. He sighed. "I found Weasley when I was up here before, following the trail of one of them. He was dead when I got there. I buried him."

"And didn't think to send a note to his family?"

"Notes can be traced," Draco said. He wasn't going to prison on a false charge of murder just to make Ronald Weasley's parents feel better about things. And he knew how people got when murder was in the air. They wanted someone to blame and usually weren't too particular about who it was. Vengeance was a stronger god than justice, at least for most people, and as for as self-sacrifice, well, that was a god Draco didn't believe in at all. "I went through his things. He had a note, a gadget for turning out the lights, a little spare change. That was it."

A sorry way to end a life.

"The note," Hermione said. The one I found in your jacket. _Found it. Back to London in a bit._ That was about this. I didn't recognize the writing."

If she had, she'd have asked all these questions earlier. Draco supposed he should be grateful she hadn't.

"You took the deluminator," Hermione said. "That's one of a kind."

"I am aware," Draco said.

"If I'd found that, I would have known."

"Too bad you only went through my jacket pockets, then," Draco said.

"What else are you hiding in your trousers," she asked sourly.

"Nothing you're likely to be interested in. Let's get a room and talk, shall we? Now that the cat's out of the bag, perhaps I can entice you to work with me. If nothing else, you can help catch Weasley's murderer."

In sympathy with that idea, she began to walk more briskly, and he had to hurry to keep up with her. This wasn't what he'd planned, but perhaps it would work out in his favor anyway.


	8. Chapter 8 - The Inn

By the time they made it back to Hogsmeade and Draco booked a room at the only Inn in town he'd consider sleeping in, the afternoon shadows had started to stretch across the roads. Long fingers of dull black reached for them both as they made their way up the stairs of Selwyn's Inn. Streetlights had begun to blink on by the time they reached their room. Their bright glow didn't push away the darkness nearly enough, so Draco yanked the heavy curtains closed and shut out the world. With every lamp going and the fireplace as well, the room was almost cheery.

A knock on the door brought whiskey. Draco poured her a glass, then poured himself one.

"I don't want," she began.

"For shock," Draco said. "It'll calm your nerves." The corpse could have looked worse – would continue to look worse until it settled down into nothing but bones – but it had been bad enough.

He put the bottle far enough away from Hermione she couldn't slip anything into it or use it as a blunt object against his head. It payed not to trust women, especially if you'd been the one to bury their ex. "To Ronald Weasley," he said, raising his glass in the air. "War hero and all around decent guy."

"To Ron," Hermione said and took a sip. One was all she needed, and from there she was gulping the liquor down as though she'd never get enough, as though it could burn away what she'd seen.

He sat down, his back to the wall, and waited. One thing he'd learned in his years of looking for things. People wanted to talk. No one really liked sitting around in silence. It was uncomfortable. Social discomfort broke more people than threats ever did, and Hermione Granger turned out to be no exception.

"You didn't kill him," she said halfway through her third glass.

"Not that I didn't want to often enough when we were children," Draco said, "but no. _He who runs away lives to run another day_ is more my motto than _Kill them all and let Death sort it out_."

"That I believe," Hermione said. Another swallow.

Draco filled her glass. Sat down again. The room wasn't bad. Better than he'd have expected to find in Hogsmeade. Everything looked clean enough, and the oriental carpet on the floor was only worn in one or two places. The place smelled of dusty lavender. All the wood had been polished. The bed was large enough Hermione wasn't likely to stomp out in a huff, demanding her own room and small enough she'd end up in his arms anyway.

And Draco doubted she'd thought to pack a nightgown in that illegally enhanced handbag of hers.

"But the note," she said. Draco appreciated her working through this. It would save him so much explanation. "He'd found it, would be back in London. Found _what_."

"The Hallows," Draco said with a shrug. He sipped at the one drink he'd allowed himself and watched her steadily. "Or one of them anyway. Like I said."

"That's what you want," she said with scorn only slightly marred by the tear stains he could still see on one cheek. "Not Ron. And besides, Harry has the cloak. And he left the wand - ." She cut herself off.

"Yes," Draco said with some annoyance. "You begin to see why I wanted to find him." And why he wanted to see her. Potter didn't keep any secrets from her or the late Weasley. He probably sent her a quick owl at 3AM whenever he had a bad dream. If Potter knew where all the Hallows were, so did Hermione.

And, so it would seem, had Weasley. Not that that had worked out too well for him.

"Where is that wand?" Draco asked. "I don't suppose you know."

"In my handbag," Hermione said dryly. "I like to carry priceless, dangerous relics with me wherever I go."

Draco's teeth ground against one another. He'd forgotten how good she was at irritating him. "I hate to point out the obvious, sweetheart," he said, "but Weasley found one – or so I assume – and was killed for his trouble. Which means I'm not the only one out here looking for them, and that other person doesn't have my scruples. Maybe you could try trusting me a little before that person kills you next."

"You have scruples?"

"Just tell me where it is," Draco said.

Hermione set her glass down and looked at him. "This room only has one bed."

"I am aware."

"I should use my wiles so you'll help Harry and me, not the Ministry."

A thrill ran down Draco's spine.

"I am not averse to letting you try," he said. "Though I should warn you, I am a difficult man to persuade."

Hermione smiled at him, and that thrill became a bit more insistent. "After the War," she said, "Harry put the wand back in Dumbledore's tomb. The idea was when he died, the power of the Wand would die with him. And, of course, he lost the stone in the Forest."

"I'm fairly sure that's been found," Draco said. At least that cleared up what Weasley had been after, what he'd found, what he'd lost. Honestly, it was all so _naïve._ Toss a weapon like that away into the forest. Leave another one on a grave."Did Potter really think he could just throw away an artifact that powerful and no one would come after it?" As soon as people learned the Hallows had been real – even a rumor they'd been real - it had been inevitable some of those same people would want them. Badly. Leaving one of them unprotected in a tomb. Harry Potter was the biggest fool he'd ever known.

"I suppose," Hermione said. "I think I want a shower, then I'll take the right side of the bed. We can check Dumbledore's tomb after it's well and truly dark."

She took her handbag with her into the room's en suite and shut the door.


	9. Chapter 9 - Some Explanations

Draco was nursing his second drink by the time she came out. The roaring fire had settled down to glowing coals, and he'd turned out most of the lamps. He was too exposed sitting there in the bright light. Too vulnerable. Darkness hid plenty of things, and Draco wanted it to hide him.

Hermione did keep a nightgown tucked away in that bag of hers, which was far less of a disappointment than Draco would have expected. No frumpy flannel, this. Cool grey silk poured over her skin. The fabric almost reached the floor, skimming past red toenails. A slit on one side reached all the way to her waist. The designers of that number hadn't bothered to pretend it was for anything other than seduction, or that such seduction would inevitably be successful.

She crossed the small room and pulled open the draperies just enough to look out. "Be careful," Draco said. The last thing he needed was her getting cursed right in front of him, right in a room where he would be the prime suspect. The light of the streetlamps caught her face and made the satin of her nightgown shimmer, and she stood, a single lit figure suspended between a dark room and a dark world.

"Obviously, I've seen Ron more recently than I told you," she said.

Draco let her go on without interruption, but he indulged his urge to get up and rest his palms against the skin of her shoulders. She'd always had the softest skin.

"He came by the bookstore with Harry, oh two weeks ago," Hermione said. She was staring out the window. Her earlier shock seemed to have hardened into resolution. "Maybe less."

"He was looking for the Hallows," Draco prompted.

Hermione shook her head. Her curls trembled around her neck with the motion, and Draco lowered his mouth to press his lips to one shoulder. "So, what did he want?"

"What all three of us wanted," she said. "To keep them out of the hands of – "

"Of people like me?" Draco asked.

"Among others," she admitted.

"And now?"

She leaned ever so slightly back against him. It was the merest hint of a shift of pressure, but Draco decided to take it as an invitation and ran his hands along her sides. His palms slid over the fabric, rough skin catching here and there against the satin, and then he pressed them in against her hips.

"Now I want to find whatever bastard killed Ron," she said.

"It seems to me," Draco said, "that our interests have aligned. Find the Hallows, find the killer."

"You'll have to be honest with me," she said.

Draco tightened his grip on her. She had a lot of nerve, talking about honesty. Not that he'd told her the whole truth of course. _I want to find the Hallows_ would have gotten him tossed out of her store, probably with a curse and a kick. But Potter, well, she'd go looking for Potter. And she had. He hadn't _lied_. Not really. He'd just left a few things out. But she'd been anything but truthful.

"Tell me," Draco asked. "Did the waitress at that godawful tea shop really see Harry?"

That got him a small laugh. It tried to sound guilty, that laugh, but it failed. "No," she admitted. "But I needed to find out why you were looking for him, and trudging around school and the forest seemed like a good way to go about it."

She turned in his arms, and Draco was shocked to see that her eyes were brimming with tears. "I never thought… how can Ron be _dead_?" She tipped her face up and seemed to study his expression. "You will help me, Draco, won't you?"

"Draco," he said musingly.

"What?"

Oh, the confusion on her face. He wasn't sure whether he should believe it or not. "We called each other by our given names once, Hermione. I just never expected to hear you do it again."

"You were… why did you leave?" she asked.

He didn't pretend not to know what she meant. "Oh, I could tell you a story about that," he said, "but I'm not sure you'd believe me."

"Try."

"Perhaps I got a note from Astoria claiming she was pregnant. Asking what would I like to do about it. It was hardly something I could let her face alone, so I left."

"You and Astoria never had children," Hermione pointed out, but she was listening to him. And had been paying attention to his life, apparently.

"No," Draco said. "We didn't. Perhaps the story goes, I went down to the bar that night and found Potter and Weasley there, and they made it clear I wasn't good enough for you and if I didn't clear out on my own, they'd be happy to help."

She twisted to look out the window again, and Draco pressed his lips first into her shoulder, and then her neck. When she didn't pull away, he whispered, "And perhaps the story is I looked at you sleeping there and realized I wouldn't do anything to you but pull you down into the gutter with me, so I left before I ruined you as surely as life has ruined me."

"Draco," she said softly.

"Or maybe I'm just an arse," he said more drily. Story time was over. "You decide. Hermione."

She kissed him then, slowly and sweetly, and he supposed that meant she'd decided.

. . . . . . . . . .

**_A/N – Thank you, all, for reading along with this story. You're giving me the gift of your time and there is nothing more precious._**


	10. Chapter 10 - The Tomb

The bed turned out to be exactly the right size. Sleep, however, didn't want to come, and after Draco had spent some time remembering just how good things with Hermione could be, he lay awake, his eyes on the strip of lamplight slicing its way into their room.

Someone else had the stone. Harry Potter, he assumed, still had the cloak. But where was the wand? He'd be a monkey's arse if that thing was still sitting in Dumbledore's tomb, waiting to be turned off by Potter's death.

Hermione stirred in his arms. "Wake up, sleeping beauty," Draco said. If you were going to be a grave-robber, best to do it at night. People had a bad habit of saying things when you went about poking into crypts during the day, starting with _What are you doing? _moving alone to, _Creep_, and ending with, _Hold still right there while I call the Aurors._

Hermione shook herself awake and put to rest any misconception he might have had about how long it took women to get ready. Her hair was up, her trousers on, her bag clutched in one hand before he'd finished rinsing his mouth and checking his pocket for his wand and Weasley's little toy.

They walked in near silence, staying by unspoken, mutual consent to the shadows that edged the streets, and then the darkest parts of the road. The moon made a habit of popping out to cover them with inconvenient brightness, and Draco thought again about how much he hated the countryside. In London, you could count on people being blinded by streetlights, their pupils sized to see in the glow. That let you slip through the pools of darkness with near invisibility. More, the spots of light made people feel safer when they were really anything but. But out here, with nothing to shelter him from the sky, anyone coming along the road would see him. Everyone's eyes would be wide enough to see in the night's dark.

"I hate Scotland," he muttered.

Hermione glanced at him but didn't respond. He kept twitching to look over his shoulder, then up the road, then off to the sides. Someone _should_ be there. It was impossible to think he was making this trek unobserved, but he never saw a soul. He'd give a lot of money to have already gotten his hands on the invisibility cloak.

He fervently hoped whoever had the stone hadn't grabbed the cloak too. He was already down by one, and if he were down by two, if he were being followed, whoever else was out there looking for these damned things would have the third in his grasp tonight.

Or maybe they weren't being followed because the bastard already had the wand and just needed the cloak.

"You're sure Potter left that wand in Dumbledore's tomb?" Draco asked.

"Quite sure," Hermione said. "I watched him put it there myself."

"And you aren't lying to me."

She stopped walking, set one hand on his arm, and dragged his attention to her face. "God as my witness," she said. "I saw Harry put that wand in Dumbledore's tomb."

After what felt like a thousand years of dreary wandering, the Black Lake shimmered before them, moonlight skimming its surface. Dumbledore's White Tomb sat on the edge of the water. The light reflected off it so much that the small building seemed to glow. "Well," Draco said grimly, "that's hard to miss."

Hermione pulled a wand out of her handbag and murmured, "Alohomora."

A door Draco hadn't seen swung open. Hermione tucked the wand back into recesses of her bag and waved him forward. "I think I'll let you go first," Draco said.

She shrugged and ducked her head to enter. He followed. A white marble bier lay uncracked and unbothered, a sheet draped over a human form. Afraid of decay – or maybe a vengeful ghost, unhappy at being disturbed – Draco tweaked the sheet back. The body under it seemed to be merely sleeping. There was no smell of rot. Dumbledore's nails hadn't grown into curved claws. His cheeks hadn't even sunk in. Someone had a dab hand with preservation spells.

"Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus," Draco murmured.

Hermione looked at him, surprise obvious on her face.

"I did go to school," Draco said with annoyance. How typical of her to assume she was the only smart person in the room. He reached cautiously forward and lifted one of Dumbledore's hands. There was nothing. He checked the other, then met Hermione's eyes. "There's nothing here," he said.

He wasn't even surprised.

. . . . . . . . .

_**A/N - Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus**____**is the fabled inscription on King Arthur's tomb, reading, Here lies Arthur, the once and future king.**_


	11. Chapter 11 - A Complication

Hermione pulled out her wand and floated the sheet back up and over Albus Dumbledore's body. "Rest in peace," she said, touching one hand softly to the man's forehead before turning to go.

"That was a waste," Draco muttered. He managed not to stomp his way out of the tomb, but it wasn't easy. _Nothing_ about his job had been easy, and he'd been so sure it would be. Use Hermione to get to Potter. Get the Hallows – or their location – from Potter. Pick the blasted things up and deliver them right back to his contact at the Ministry. Maybe cast a few spells with the wand, just to feel that sort of power under his control.

None of those simple things had happened. Instead, he was spending far too much time in Scotland, he'd found a dead body instead of the stone, and he'd broken into a grave for nothing.

Hermione, at least, had been mostly pleasant. Certainly, pleasant to look at, among other things.

Hermione, who followed him out of the crypt, turned her back to him and fumbled with a wand to get the door shut up again. Nothing quite like locking the barn door after the horse had been stolen. When she was done, wand tucked neatly back into her bag, she began to walk briskly away, back toward Hogsmeade.

"Wait." Draco had to hurry to catch up with her. "Where are you going?"

"You can't apparate from the grounds of Hogwarts," said Hermione as if that were self-evident.

"And also, water is wet," Draco said

"I beg your pardon?"

Draco shrugged. "I thought we were stating simple facts. You can't apparate from Hogwarts. Water is wet. Hermione Granger has a mole right above her – "

"That's fine," she said hurriedly. "What I meant was, if we want to get back to London, we'll have to get off the grounds of the school. You didn't leave anything in that inn, did you?"

He had not, and once they reached the edge of the grounds, she took him by the arm and side-along apparated him to London. Draco shook himself to get that horrid feeling of passing through the void off his skin. The streetlights showed a pretty, narrow side street. Cobblestones marched up to whitewashed walls with numbered doors. Pots filled with flowers sat next to most of those doors, and Draco was sure if he inhaled deeply enough he'd smell the money in the air. No one poor lived here.

Hermione knocked with a sharp rat-tat-tat on one of the doors.

"Where _exactly _are we?" Draco asked with more than a little annoyance.

Before Hermione could answer, the door opened, and Ginevra Weasley squinted out at them. The warm smile she wore for Hermione turned far cooler when she spotted him.

"Malfoy," she said, moving her lips around the syllables with obvious distaste. "Why is he here?"

"Long story," Hermione said. "But he's fine."

"That," Ginny muttered, "has never been the problem."

"Hullo, Red," Draco said. He dragged his eyes from the hair bundled up in a sloppy topknot to the bare feet. Her toenail polish was as flawless as ever, and no one could fault the way Quidditch kept her in perfect form. He liked hair a little curlier, perhaps, and the flannel pajamas were not to his taste, but he'd admired her well enough back in the day. "You're looking well."

She rolled her eyes but opened the door wide enough for the two of them to come in. "Can I get you anything?" she asked. "A nice spot of tea?"

"It's three in the morning," Draco pointed out. Whiskey would be far more appropriate. He didn't trust people who tried to solve all the world's problems with boiled leaf water. It might be very British, but it was also unreasonably optimistic.

"So that's a yes, then," Ginny said and began to fill a kettle. "Do you still like Earl Grey, Hermione?"

"Yes, please."

Draco couldn't help but notice she didn't ask him what he wanted, which was about the level of hospitality he should have known to expect. Ginny set the pot on to boil, pulled down four mugs, and began to set up a tray with milk and sugar.

"Four?" Draco asked. He made a point of looking around the room at the three of them. "I know maths can be a trifle difficult, Red, but I always gave you credit for being able to count."

A light clicked on in the hallway and feet shuffled down the stairs. This was fabulous. Hermione not only planned to discuss their situation with Ginevra Weasley but also with whatever poor sot she'd managed to convince to live with her. Draco felt sorry for him, whoever he was, until the poor sorry sot in question appeared in the doorway, stopped short, and fixed decidedly unfriendly eyes on him.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Harry Potter asked.


	12. Chapter 12 - Late Night Tea

Hermione half stood in her chair and held one hand out to Harry Potter. "He's fine," she said.

Ginny looked away, which was more than enough information to let Draco know this was about to become unpleasant. Sodding Harry Potter. And how much did he want to bet that _witch_ had known where the bastard was all along?

"Potter," Draco said. "Fancy meeting you here. I've been looking for you." He made a show of leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs out. He would be the picture of a man coolly unconcerned by hostility if for no other reason than he knew that would be the most irritating thing he could do. It wasn't in his own best interests, which Draco acknowledged back in the deep recesses of his mind, but sometimes a man had to put past antagonism on the front burner and enjoy watching it simmer.

"Are you doing this again?" Potter asked Hermione. It was scathing, that question, and it pushed her back down into her seat. "Wasn't it bad enough last time?"

Her voice was incredibly cold when she answered him. "I am an adult woman."

"And he's a prat."

"And if I choose to spend my time with men you don't like, that is my prerogative."

"While I always appreciate your paternalistic impulses to control your friends," Draco said in the most aggravating drawl he could affect, "I can assure you, Hermione did not bring me here in the middle of the night to ask for your approval."

"Why _are_ you here?" Ginny asked. She made herself busy pouring water and bringing tea things to the table, which kept Draco from seeing her face when Hermione responded.

"Ron's dead, Gin."

He might not have been able to see her face, but there was no way Draco could miss Ginevra Weasley's reaction. She dropped the tea mug she was holding, and it shattered on the kitchen floor. An agonized keening pushed her against the counter. He could see her folding in on herself. He'd comforted Hermione, but he didn't think a hug would be that welcome here. When Harry pulled a wand and pointed it at him, he was sure of it. Hermione reached her hand up and tiredly pushed Harry's arm down. "Don't," she said. "He's not the murderer."

"And how would you know that?"

"I found him," Draco said. He met Potter's eyes and didn't blink. People had all read reports on how the American spy agencies knew that liars blinked more, so they assumed if you got dust in your eye, you were busy spinning yarns. It was aggravating because it meant that, even when he was telling the truth the way he was now, he had to focus on not blinking. He hated the dry feeling he got in his eyes after heartfelt and forcibly sincere conversations. "He was in the Forbidden Forest, face down in a pile of leaves. No wound. Dead. I went through his pockets, found this." Draco slowly reached his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out Weasley's note.

Potter snatched it from his hand with a wandless muttered, "Accio."

"_Found it, back to London in a bit. _I don't suppose you know what he was talking about?"

"Presumably the resurrection stone," Draco said. It went against the grain to tell Potter anything, but since the man presumably had the cloak, he was going to have to tell him everything eventually.

He thought of the way Hermione's skin had gleamed in the lamplight spilling into their room.

Maybe not _everything_.

"And why were you in the Forbidden Forest," Ginny asked. She had her voice under control, but her face had lost all its color. The orange spots of her freckles stood out against white skin. Her jaw was trembling.

"I was looking for the resurrection stone," Draco said. He was going to need eye drops when this all was over. Either that or a good cry. "Weasley got there first."

"So, you killed him." Potter was reaching for his wand again.

"No," Draco said. How slowly was he going to have to speak here? "I found him already dead."

"We buried the body," Hermione said. "Harry, please listen. Someone_ is_ after the Hallows."

"We checked Dumbledore's tomb," Draco said. "That one was gone."

"You told him where the wand was?" Harry asked Hermione. They were very cautious, those words. He moved his lips about them in slow motion.

"I told him about the tomb." Hermione was looking at him very seriously. "Took him there. The wand –"

"The wand was missing, okay Potter." Draco couldn't stand this any longer. "The Ministry hired me, but I'm not going to kill for your little trinkets, no matter what they've got over my head. Someone else will, though, and they've got the stone and, I assume, the wand."

"Right," Harry said. He and Hermione were still looking at one another, and her hand stole, as if unbidden, to her handbag. Women and their security blankets. Draco didn't understand it. He'd take his security from a wand and the shadows, but every woman he'd known clutched onto her handbag like it contained salvation.

"That person," Draco said, articulating every word now, "will presumably come calling, looking for the cloak."

"Right," Harry said again.

"And that person will kill."

Ginny took a deep breath. The sound of her inhalation was very loud in the kitchen. "That's convenient," she said. "Ron's murderer coming here."

Draco had a feeling from her tone she didn't mean to offer whoever it was tea when he showed up. Murder might as well be contagious. Whenever one happened, another seemed to follow.

"Here isn't good," Harry said. "Here is too watched."

"Where, then?" Hermione asked.

"Why not back to Hogsmeade?" Harry asked.

Draco had become a bit player in this story, and that made him stir milk into his tea with more force than strictly necessary. His spoon clinked against the side of the cup. Both Hermione and Harry ignored him as they stared at one another, lost in the silent communications of old friends.


	13. Chapter 13 - The Plot Thickens

The bad luck of having to eat at Madam Puddifoots twice in as many days struck Draco as profoundly unfair. "I don't even think they serve breakfast," he muttered as Harry Potter walked with far too much vigor from the apparition landing spot to the café. There was nothing worse in this world than morning people and their grating cheer.

"I wasn't planning on a full breakfast," Potter said. There were bells on the door. They jangled as he opened it, and the sound made Draco's head ache. He hadn't even had a proper drink the night before what with plodding around in dark tombs and enduring midnight conversations with Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley.

She, at least, had opted to stay home in case the murderer arrived there. She'd had a chilling glimmer in her eye that suggested she rather hoped he did. Draco had opted not to pursue the matter. If Ron's sister got sent off to Azkaban for killing a man, well, that was nothing to him. She was nothing to him, despite what Hermione might have thought, coolly giving him Ginny's address as if a few gallant flirtations back in the day meant he'd spared one thought for the woman since.

Giving him Ginny's address…

When he'd been looking for Harry Potter, who seemed to be living there.

Draco sat down at one of the unforgivably pink tables and smiled at Hermione. She was one in a million. Such cheek.

"You look like the cat dragging in something dead," Potter said. "So pleased with yourself."

Draco plucked a menu up and squinted at the horrid, looping cursive that listed off the various teas. "I was merely thinking," he said. "Not something you're familiar with, I expect."

"And what were you thinking?" Hermione pulled her wand and cast a discreet cleaning charm which, after the strawberry jam incident of the day before, Draco appreciated.

"That you are one of a kind," he said. He raised his hand to summon a waitress without bothering to ask whether Potter was ready to order. "Could I get plain, black tea?" he asked. "Nothing hibiscus. Nothing rose. Just tea."

The waitress' smile was insincere, but she wrote 'T' on her pink pad before turning to Potter.

"The same, if you don't mind," he said.

"I'll have the rose tea with a scone, please," Hermione said. "And milk, if it's not too much trouble."

"It's a tea shop," Draco said as the waitress turned away. "How could it be too much trouble to bring you milk?"

"She's going to spit in your cup," Potter said. He sounded far too pleased by that, and Draco stood. He needed to get away from the pair of them before he said something too pointed about Potter's idiocy.

"Do you have a cigarette in that bag of yours?" he asked Hermione. He'd quit, or tried to, but now seemed as good a time as ever to start again. Smoking was always a good excuse to go stand outside, away from whoever was irritating you.

Hermione handed him one without a word, and he strode back out, through the door with the loud bells, and found a convenient wall to lean against. A touch of his wand to the tip of the cigarette and it lit. He put his wand away and took a long drag.

Greg Goyle came out of a broom shop and spotted him. From the frying pan of Potter to the fire of his bad choice of childhood friends. Draco forced a smile to his face. "Twice in two days," he said. And just as unwelcome as the tea shop. "How's hunting?"

"I've had better luck," Greg said. He pulled a cigarette of his own out and lit it. The two of them stood under a black awning, smoking, pretending they still liked one another. All adulthood was a series of lies layered over one another like a watercolor painting. _What a lovely house. Those shoes look great. I'd be happy to take the job. No need to threaten me. No need to bring up the past. I'm glad to do anything for the Ministry these days. _

Draco smoked for a bit in silence, hoping Goyle would go away. When he didn't, he asked, "What's the problem?"

"Have to get into old Dumbledore's tomb," Goyle said. "Rumor has it Potter left a wand there my employer wants."

"So?" Draco said. His heart had begun to race. Prickles sprang to life along his arms. Goyle. _Goyle._ To hide his internal agitation, he slouched more deeply into his uncaring lean and offered up a suggestion. "Alohomora. You were always good at that one."

"Tomb's sealed," Goyle said. "Locked against any spell."

Patently false, as Draco had learned the night before, but Goyle's incompetence wasn't new to him. "Try a muggle pickaxe, then."

Goyle brightened up. He clapped Draco on the shoulder. "You're a sport," he said before nearly skipping off down the cobblestones.

Draco dropped his cigarette and ground it out with one heel. "Right," he muttered. "Sport."

Time to go back inside.


	14. Chapter 14 - Hermione's Solution

His tea had made it to the table when he went back in. Draco slid into his seat, glowered at Potter as a matter of form, and took a tentative sip. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't great, but it was drinkable. Hermione was picking small chunks off her scone and grinding them into dust between her fingers. Her tea seemed to be untouched.

Well, grief put some people off their appetite. Fear tended to stoke his. Draco reached over, broke off a large chunk of scone, and popped it into his mouth. Hermione didn't so much as blink, but Potter made a sound low in his throat that might have been a snarl.

"You really do hate me, don't you," Draco asked. The question was more idle than sincere.

"I can't imagine why I wouldn't," Harry said. "Have a nice smoke?"

"Nice enough." He turned to Hermione because, despite knowing Potter surely had the cloak and sooner or later he'd have to ransack the man's house to get it, what he really cared about here was her. "Come to any conclusions?"

She met his gaze, and Draco was struck by how pretty her eyes were. He was used to his own pallid grey and wasn't the sort of man to go around staring, lovelorn, into women's eyes, but Hermione's really were quite spectacular. The brown was flecked with bits of gold that gave them a warmth and depth his own lacked. He was so lost in contemplation of how _exactly_ one might go about describing them he almost missed her answer and had to ask her to say it again.

"Obviously, we're going to track down whoever killed Ron."

"And remand him to the custody of the Ministry," Draco said. He waited for her to agree, and when she didn't, he very carefully took another sip of his tea. "Or?" he asked.

"I don't think the Ministry will be especially receptive," Hermione said. "You did say they're the one who hired you, right?"

"Yes."

"Something tells me you weren't the only one the brought in for this," Potter said. He sounded a bit grim. Draco wanted to argue with him simply because arguing with Harry Potter was one of the things he did, but in this instance, he had to grant that the man was right. And, really, this whole business wasn't on the up and up, and if he had been in charge of hiring people to track down the Hallows, he'd have set multiple people on the chase too.

Multiple people like Goyle. And apparently, someone else too, someone who had an unbeatable wand. Three people, all trying to grab the same things.

Draco took another sip of tea, swallowed too quickly, and set himself to coughing.

"Are you all right?" Hermione asked.

"Fine." Draco waved a hand at her. "I'll be fine. Tell me what your pretty little head has come up with."

"We track down Ron's killer – "

"Let him come to us, really," Harry said.

"And then we kill him." Hermione said that last bit as if it were wholly obvious. She might as well have said, _and then have lunch._ Draco had just gotten his coughing under control, but that set him off again to such an extent the waitress began to walk toward them, concern written on her face. Having customers drop dead had to be bad for business.

"I'm fine," Draco managed to get out. "Just swallowed some tea the wrong way."

Harry Potter's look of contempt made Draco grit his teeth. He inched closer to Hermione and took her hand in his. "Sweetheart," he said, articulating as clearly as he could. "You are a nice girl. This is not something you want to get mixed up in."

"When someone killed Ron, they brought me into it," she said. "Also, didn't you come to my bookshop with the express purpose of dragging me into your little plot."

"That was not to commit a crime. It was to help me find Potter."

"And here he is. Mission accomplished."

Draco tried again. "You aren't the sort to go around killing people."

"You might be surprised by what sort she is." Potter sounded amused now.

"Then she'll go to Azkaban," Draco snapped, turned to glare at the damned fool whose fault all this was in the first place. Leave one of the Hallows lying on the ground of the forest, leave another one in a tomb. Where did the bastard store the third one, the priceless cloak? In the back of his sock drawer? In an old linen closet?

"I think you underestimate her," Harry said.

"I'm pleased you care." Hermione pulled her hand out of his grip, though not before running her thumb in an intimate circle around his palm. Shivers ran down Draco's spine. "It will be easy."

"There are no easy ones," Draco muttered. He'd been told that once, and the wisdom of it was just beginning to sink in. There were no easy ones. There was no big time. There was just endless scrabbling in the gutters.

"And on that cheerful note," Hermione said, "let's get two rooms then go to the shops and make a point of talking about the cloak."

"Two rooms?" Harry said. "You don't think I'm sharing a room with Malfoy, I hope."

"Of course not," she said. "I am."


	15. Chapter 15 - Red Herrings

Rooms acquired, Draco offered Hermione his arm and led her back out into the light of day. His gesture was mostly gallant, and only the slightest bit inspired by the way he could almost hear Harry Potter grinding his teeth at the courtesy. The lobby of the Inn hadn't struck Draco as small the day before but now, trapped in the space with Harry Potter, he became all too aware of the nearness of the walls. The pictures were dark and shadowed. The doorways narrow. He was happy to escape to the outdoors, though he had to shade his eyes once they were out. Sunlight wanted to blind him, and the heat of the day was already making the back of his neck itch as sweat trickled down, wiggling its damp way under his collar. "Where to?"

"The bookshop," Hermione said.

Of course. Draco could think of few things less productive, but if it kept her away from Goyle for even a few more hours, he would follow. Goyle, who saw them on the street. Goyle, whose eyes widened ever so slightly at the sight of Potter. Goyle, who was carrying a heavy bag loaded down – or so Draco assumed – with the tools he'd need to physically break into Dumbledore's tomb.

How typical of Goyle that he was going to plod his way up to the tomb in the day. He'd never recognized a subtlety in his life.

Harry leaned against the outside of the bookshop, and for a brief, wonderful moment, Draco thought he might be deciding to bugger off home to console Ginevra like a half-way decent boyfriend – housemate? – or do research on who might be after the Hallows. Naturally, that sort of luck wasn't to be his. "Do you remember coming down here when we were students?" he asked Hermione in a voice so loud the waitress back at the café could probably hear it.

Hermione stopped in the doorway and smiled at him with such fondness Draco decided he needed a drink on the spot. Why he couldn't have fallen for some nice girl with nice friends he didn't know. But he hadn't. Instead, he was stuck with this one, whose best friend despised him. It was untenable.

"You snuck down in your invisibility cloak." Her laugh sounded fake. "I wanted to kill you half the time because of that thing. You got into more trouble."

"It was the hooligan's best ally," Potter agreed. The grin he turned on Draco was mean and enjoyed being such. "I got you more than once when we were boys because of that cloak."

"If you're looking for congratulations, I've grown up," Draco said sourly. "Maybe you could consider doing the same?"

"I'm not invisible now, am I?" Harry asked.

"More's the pity."

"Where do you keep that thing these days," Hermione asked too brightly.

"Back pocket at the moment," Harry said. "Gin keeps threatening to get rid of it."

The details of Harry Potter's domestic life, even if he was nearly shouting them to the street in an attempt to lure in a killer, were more than Draco felt like subjecting himself to. He opened the door to the bookstore, led Hermione in, and nearly pushed her past the _New Publications_, further past _Summer Favorites_, and went all the way to the back corner, where _Research, Dictionaries, and Old Tomes_ hid in the shadows.

"Maybe I wanted to look at those," she said.

"You didn't." She opened her mouth to retort, and Draco rolled his eyes. "You _didn't_," he said again, this time with more emphasis. "You only came here so you two could put on your little play and invite every scoundrel in town to stop by your room tonight."

Hermione's smile gave her away. A stray beam of light snuck its way from a high window, through dust motes, barely missing a pile of old textbooks, and landed right at the corner of those upturned lips. Draco leaned in and brushed his own mouth against that spot then, when she didn't object, turned his attentions to her throat, the line of her jaw, her perfect skin. "You," he murmured," are a pain in my arse, and I would resent you for it if you weren't so utterly beautiful."

She didn't say anything, and, worried he'd crossed a line she didn't want to scream about while searching for a killer, Draco pulled back and studied her face. Her eyes looked sad, and when her mouth tried to find a happy curve, it failed.

"I think," she said slowly, "we should go back to the Inn and talk – really talk. It's time I told you everything."

Draco wasn't going to argue with that. God knew she was keeping things from him. _"I'm looking for Potter," _he'd said, and Hermione had led him on a wild goose chase up through Scotland when she'd known exactly where the man was. Draco could use knowing a few more things from the 'everything' vat. And, besides, he hadn't gotten a lot of sleep – or any – the night before and the thought of lying down on a bed was tempting. He let her lead the way back out of the bookstore and down the street.

Potter let them go by without speaking.


	16. Chapter 16 - An Incomplete Confession

Hermione drew the curtains against the day, shrouding them both in cool darkness. Draco sank down on the bed, grateful to be off his feet, grateful for the shadows, not looking forward to what she had to say. The way she sat on the edge of the bed – a little too gingerly, as if she were afraid of his response – didn't ease the trepidation. If anything, it heightened it.

"Obviously," she began, "I knew about the Hallows before you arrived in my shop."

"You used them in the war," Draco said dryly. "I had assumed that meant you knew that they were."

That brought a small smile to her face, even if her eyes remained guarded. Well, she'd lost a friend in this, and that would make any decent person melancholy. Potter had shoved his own grief down so far into his soul it had become nothing more than a pained twist to his mouth when he thought no one was looking. He'd focused on catching the killer. He'd find out once he did that grief found a way to multiply when you tried to push it away. Things you didn't let yourself feel didn't fade. They grew.

Draco reached a hand up and traced the outline of her smile. They'd always felt like gifts. He'd always felt lucky he could see them.

She took his hand in hers and held it so tightly the bones became better acquainted than bones tended to be. "Harry got word," she said. "He works in the Ministry, you know. Auror, though mostly desk duty."

Draco let her talk.

"At first, no one believed about the Hallows. They were the sorts of things crazy people latched on to. Articles and books about them played to the conspiracy crowd, but bit by bit, a few people began to take them seriously. Whispers got louder."

"They're a weapon," Draco said. If there was one thing governments always wanted, it was better weapons. People could starve, groups could live in fear, would-be dictators could foment in the back allies and the parlors of the rich. The Ministry would ignore all that. But the rumor of a wand that made you invincible? Oh, they'd lunge for that. And they had.

"They aren't, though," Hermione said. "They're the tools of Death."

"As I said, a weapon."

"Capital D Death," she said. "The cloak is fairly safe. It hides you. But the stone, the wand… they attract his attention. Go for them, and you end up regretting it."

Draco didn't want to fight with her, and Weasley had met his own death, sure enough, which seemed to suggest her argument was right. Dead on, even.

"Everyone who's ever had the wand ends up dying because someone wants it," Hermione said. "Have all three, and you end up, at least in theory, the master of death, and that's not a power the Ministry should have."

Draco couldn't argue with that. He wasn't sure the Ministry should have the power to levy taxes.

"So, Harry decided the best thing to do was hide them. Too many people knew he left the wand in the tomb, and – "

"Clearly," Draco said, interrupting her. He was still bitter they'd broken into that place for nothing. "Since it's not there."

Her smile looked even more forlorn, and he'd have reached up to try and brush at it with his hand, but she still had a grip on him that allowed no freedom. "True. We thought the whereabouts of the stone were unknown, but Ron said he'd go up and get it, just in case. Harry dropped in there in the… the… "

"Right," Draco said. Some things were better off not mentioned ever again.

Hermione looked grateful to have been interrupted. "Better to have it under lock and key then sitting out in the woods where a random student might find it."

"He must have been followed," Draco said. He couldn't fathom Goyle figuring out where the stone was on his own, much less having the skills to comb through an entire forest looking for it. No, just as he himself had latched on to Hermione in his search for the Hallows, Goyle must have decided to trail around after Ronald Weasley. It was a bit galling that he'd been more successful.

Hermione nodded, then a single tear crept out of her eye and snuck down her cheek.

"Hermione," he said softly. "It will be fine, we'll find him, whoever he is. Wherever he is."

Presumably trying to hack his way into Dumbledore's tomb. If Goyle had the stone, perhaps Draco could manage to snag it from him before he met his eternal reward or, at the very least, a very strong obliviate spell. Then he'd steal Potter's cloak since the rotten bugger had been so helpful about sharing the thing's location. Potter could be left to deal with Goyle, and he'd get clean away. Surely if he returned to the Ministry with two of the three Hallows, they'd consider that a partial success. He'd point out that if they hired multiple thieves, they shouldn't expect them to all get all three. That was unreasonable.

Yes, he'd take the two back, and it would all work out. And then he'd capitalize on the way this entire wretched job had brought Hermione back into his life.

"C'mere," Draco said and, for once, Hermione didn't argue with him. She pushed her shoes off, then pulled her legs up to the bed. She let go of his hand and draped one arm over him. Draco pushed some hair out of her face and kissed the side of her mouth. "Did we have sex that first night?" he asked. He'd wracked his brain but, for the life of him, he couldn't remember, and a man liked to remember things like that.

Her laugh was a little guilty, but she didn't pull away. "No," she admitted. "I drugged your last drink so you'd pass out. Once you said you were looking for Harry, I knew the Ministry must have hired you. I needed to keep you close and wanted to go through your pockets."

"Sneaky," he said, half admiringly.

"This has all be so exhausting," she said, snuggling her head down against his shoulder. "I'm so tired of the Hallows and all the intrigue and the lying. I just want to go back to my bookshop and have decent tea and meet you for drinks after I close."

Draco's heart thumped at that, and his mouth became dry. It was a future he could want as well. "Don't worry," he said. "We'll get there. I'll take care of everything."


	17. Chapter 17 - A Slight Problem

Nothing was likely to happen in the daylight. Harry was lounging around in Hogsmeade, making a spectacle of himself, and Goyle was off swinging an honest-to-god pickaxe at Dumbledore's tomb.

Probably the only honest day's work Goyle had done in all his adult life, now that Draco thought about it. Not that he should talk. He hadn't exactly taken up a life of accounting or shop keeping himself. Still, the comforting knowledge that he had a good sense of where two of the Hallows were let Draco enjoy a leisurely morning indulgence followed by an equally indulgent nap. He drifted off into sleep with Hermione's head nestled against his shoulder, slowly cutting off circulation to his hand, and woke some hours later. The hint of light slipping in past the edges of the curtains suggested it was still day out.

He thought about waking Hermione and having a second bout of indulgence but decided against it.

He ought to find Harry. Duty called, and the sooner he got this started, the sooner he'd get it over with.

Draco slipped carefully out from under Hermione's hands and pulled on pants and trousers. A quick bewitched sleep spell ensured she'd stay safely unconscious for a while. What was good for the gander was equally good for the goose, and at least with magic, she wouldn't wake up with a splitting headache the way he had after she'd drugged him.

Potter had dozed off in his room as well, though his was a much lighter sleep than Hermione's. Well, he hadn't been tired out beforehand by what one might term _aerobic activity_. He stirred when Draco opened his door, but before he could reach his wand, Draco knocked him out as well. Bewitched sleep was a tricky spell, but more than useful in his line of work so he'd taken the time to practice it.

"Accio cloak," he said. Naturally, nothing happened. Nothing was _ever _that easy. Bloody Hallows. Draco stalked into the room, rolled Harry Potter over onto his stomach, and reached a hand down the back pocket of the man's trousers. This was all _very_ inappropriate, and the last thing he'd ever wanted to do in his life was fondle Harry Potter's arse, but here he was. At least the bastard hadn't been lying about where he'd stashed the thing. It came fluttering out, a stream of silver fabric too light to be real. It was hard not to stare at it with wonder. One of three legendary objects. Draco passed one arm under it and watched his hand disappear. He held a book from the table under the cloak, and it disappeared as well. Magic never got old, never stopped being marvelous. Even now, when he mostly used the stuff for what he had to admit were ill-gotten gains, Draco hadn't lost his sense of joy at the way the magic could bend the universe.

Irritation at the many ways Potter had bent the universe as a child overtook wonder after a few minutes and Draco wadded it back down into his own pocket. A scrap of fabric wasn't worth a man's life, however rare and marvelous it was. Not fabric, not the magical stone, not even an unbeatable wand.

With the cloak acquired, all he needed to do was knock out Goyle, steal the stone, get his arse to the Ministry, and then wash his hands of this whole affair.

Draco rolled Potter back over, tucked a pillow under his head, and shut the door carefully behind him. He'd sleep that off, wake in a few hours, and, with any luck, find a convenient target to blame. He ought to have told the pair of do-gooders about Goyle. Would have given them a focus while he ducked out. Of course, that Hermione planned to just murder Ron's killer had made that plan of action a tad tricky. Goyle might be a worthless no-good, buggering arsehole, but he was a worthless no-good buggering arsehole someone in the Ministry had hired, which meant if he died there'd be an inquiry. Mostly to see if the murderer had any of the Hallows about her person, and as Draco didn't want to see Hermione as one of the targets of a Ministry show-trial, he'd kept his mouth shut.

He was congratulating himself on that decision when he opened the door to the room he shared with Hermione and saw Goyle.

He was seated on the edge of the bed with the tip of his wand pressed against the unconscious Hermione's temple.


	18. Chapter 18 - An Inadequate Solution

"Fancy meeting you here," Goyle said. His wand didn't waver from Hermione's temple, which was bloody bad luck. If he'd turned his weapon on Draco, it would have been an easy enough matter to knock him out and dodge any errant spells that might come careening out his wand. As it was, one false move and Hermione could end up in real trouble.

"Can't imagine why you're surprised," Draco said. "You surely didn't think I was drinking tea in that horrible shop for my health."

Goyle let out a coarse laugh. "No," he agreed. "I s'pose not. I should have figured when I saw you with her. You ain't never was the type to go for the bookish girls."

"Oh?" Draco took a casual step into the room. The two men stared at one another, caught between Goyle's obvious threat and general lack of eloquence. Draco suspected telling him to just spit it out wouldn't go over well, so he settled on a dry, "I don't generally care for threesomes, so I suggest you toddle on."

Goyle made no move toward toddling, however. Instead, he settled down as if making himself comfortable in Draco's bed, sitting next to Draco's… whatever she was. Pidgeon. Mole. Hope for salvation. "She's not my type," Goyle said, "And neither are you. Lying bastards, the both of you."

"Did the pick-axe not work?" Draco asked. "Heavy things, pick-axes, but they've got a good reputation for efficacy."

Goyle's jaw thrust out in a way that made his face squarer and more sullen than it had been. "It worked well enough," he said. "T'only problem was there wasn't nothing there."

"Someone stole Albus Dumebldore's body?" Draco asked. "That seems a bit disturbing." He paused and when nothing happened, added. "You might want to alert the Ministry about that."

"Nah, the old man was there, right as rain, but no wand."

"I think I'm going to sit," Draco said, and when Goyle made no move to object, he lowered himself into one of the uncomfortable arm chairs every inn had. They probably all ordered them from the same company. _Get your all broken springs and pointed horsehair in one place. Buy five, we'll throw in the sixth for free._ It was useful to him now. Any bulge the cloak might have made sank into the sagging upholstery. "Much as I hate to admit it, Goyle, I'm a bit lost. Maybe you could let me know why you're here since I'd like to get back to the part of the day where I have sex with a beautiful woman."

Goyle snorted at that. "You've slept with more women than I can count." Draco had to admit that was probably true, not only because he had been more than a little liberal in his sampling of the fairer sex, but also because maths had never been Goyle's strong suit. Not maths, not logic, not anything, really, other than a knack of toadying up to the strongest bully in the room.

Alas, that had stopped being Draco some time ago.

"I admit to enjoying a romp," Draco said.

"What I mean to say is you ain't sleeping with her because she's yer type, Malfoy."

"Oh?"

"You was hired to get the Hallows same as I was, weren't you?"

"What makes you think that?" Draco asked. He shifted his weight on the chair to make his wand easier to reach.

"Potter," Goyle said, and Draco had to bite at the inside of his cheek to keep his face impassive. Bloody, rotten Potter, spoiling everything as usual. "Now, you might come up here just to get yerself laid – can't suspect a man for that, nor fault him neither – but no one brings Harry Potter along on a honeymoon."

"It's a fair point," Draco conceded.

Goyle pressed the point of his wand more cruelly into Hermione's temple but, drugged by Draco's spell, she did little more than mumble and shift a bit. "Which means, since as you so kindly told me you aren't into threesomes, I'm guessing you ain't hoping to sample his wares – "

Draco didn't bother to control his disgusted expression at the very idea, and Goyle chortled.

"Exactly," he said. "Yer up here usin' her to get to him to get to the Hallows."

"Much as you used Ronald Weasley?" Draco asked.

"A tool's a tool," Goyle said, which was near enough to a confirmation for government work, as the saying went. If Draco hadn't despised the man before, he would now.

"Am I wrong in assuming you killed him and took the stone?"

"Might have," Goyle said. "Not that I'm admitting nothing, you understand. Many things can happen to a man out there in the Forbidden Forest. Rocks fall on you. Giant spiders eat you. 'Tisn't a place to be going if you aren't planning to be extra careful."

"Charming."

Goyle's mouth hardened in to a flat line. "Don't be so high and mighty, Malfoy," he said. "Whatever I might have done, you're in here seducing some poor girl to get your hands on the things. You ain't no better than me."

"Considerably worse, I'd say," Draco said. "You, at least, have been somewhat successful."

Goyle looked pleased at that. "True," he said. "And now yer going to hand over the wand and the cloak, and I'll put my wand away, and you can go back to… what did you call it? The sex part of yer day."

"I don't have the wand," Draco said.

Goyle's eyes hardened. He kept one hand holding the wand to Hermione's temple but used the other to grip her throat. "I think you might," he said. "Since it wasn't in the tomb."

Draco met his eyes, staying as calm as he could, but Goyle began to squeeze. "I don't have it," Draco said again. He let bitterness fill his voice. "The bint took me up there in the middle of the night, and it was frustrating and worthless. They hired me, and they hired you, and it looks like they must have hired someone else too. There's a third party out there somewhere, and they've got the wand."

Goyle watched him for a moment, laughed, then released his grip. Draco controlled the relief that made his shoulders want to sag. "I'll settle for the cloak then," he said. He held a hand out and, when Draco didn't move, mouthed the word, _crucio_.

Draco held still more a moment longer. Goyle opened his mouth and go the first syllable out. "Cruc –" and Draco jumped up and tore the cursed cloak from his back pocket.

"Here," he said.

Goyle rose to his feet, wand still trained on Hermione, and reached slowly for the cloak. When he had it in his grasp, he spun on his feet and was at the door, wand still at the ready. "Pleasure doing business with you, Malfoy," he said, and then he was gone.


	19. Ch 19 - A Woman's Work is Never Done

Shite.

Shite. Shite. Shite. Shite. Shite. _Shite._

Draco picked up one of the glasses that the inn had thoughtfully put out for guests and hurled it at the closed door as hard as he could. It shattered into multiple, very satisfying pieces, but that didn't bring the cloak back. Or Goyle's head on a platter. Or any ideas about what to do. He wrenched open a whiskey bottle, cast a furious _reparo_ at the glass on the floor, and poured himself a drink. Then another. Then a third.

His bewitched sleep charm was too good for him to be able to wake either of the sleeping beauties, so he sat and drank as the sun went down and darkness crept in and Goyle got further and further away. It was well past the time any reasonable person went to bed when Hermione rolled over, opened her eyes, and smiled at him.

A man could live for a thousand years on nothing but water and that smile.

"I must have been more tired than I thought," she said.

"Yeah," Draco muttered. Bad news was best spilled all at once. No point in dribbling it out. "Goyle was here while you slept."

"Oh?"

Harry picked that moment to open their door without knocking. Draco spared a moment to wish he and Hermione had been in flagrante delicto. That might have taught the wretched sot a thing or two about the inherent virtue of respecting privacy.

"We have a problem," Potter said.

That got Hermione to sit up, sharply and suddenly, and there was a glorious moment where her breasts announced themselves to the room, areolas like the breaking dawn. Then she accioed her shirt. Draco smiled. Potter turned away, delightfully uncomfortable. "What?" she asked, thrusting her arms through her sleeves. "Why do I think your problem and what Draco was about to say are the same thing?"

"Because life can be tidy sometimes," Draco said.

Oh, the look Potter gave him. It was surely wrong to enjoy the other man's irritation quite so much, but Draco had no intention of changing that particular part of his personality. Disliking Potter had become a habit, and changing habits was far too much trouble.

"Someone charmed me to sleep, then took the cloak," Harry said.

"And you were saying Goyle was here?" Hermione asked Draco.

He nodded. "Demanded to know where the wand was. Seemed a mite put out it hadn't been up in Dumbledore's tomb the way rumor claimed. Made a couple threats."

"And what did you tell him?" Potter's eyes grew so narrow Draco hoped he knew a good optician. That couldn't possibly be good for his vision.

"That I didn't have the wand," Draco said evenly. Some conversations he didn't plan to recount in their entirety, partly because they made him look bad and partly because Goyle was so embarrassingly stupid. Being bested by him in any way was just humiliating. "We didn't stop to discuss stock tips."

"But did he kill Ron?" Hermione asked.

Draco hesitated, a pause Potter jumped on. "I knew it," he said. "Over a decade since we left school, and you're still the same rotten, no-good… you're working with him. "

That was such a terrible conclusion all Draco could do was stare at Potter in disgust. He wanted to keep Hermione out of Goyle's reach and Goyle out of hers, more because he didn't want her to end up in Azkaban than out of any concern for Goyle. But from one pause, Potter travelled all the way to the wrong destination. Sometimes, Draco wondered how Potter managed his life at all, given how he jumped from bad idea to worse one.

"I assume you two split the targets," Harry went on. "You took Hermione, seduced her again, and he went after Ron."

"Was Goyle really Weasley's type?" Draco asked.

Potter drew his wand, which was so typical. Honestly, he'd always reacted first and thought second. Draco raised his hands in the universal symbol of _I'm not armed, you dumbass_, and said, "I'm going to take that as a no."

"I'm warning you, Malfoy," Potter began.

"That you'll curse me?" Draco raised an eyebrow. "I think you'll find that tends to work better if you don't announce your plans to your target."

There was a long pause while the two of them stared at once another, during which Hermione accioed her clothes and continued to get dressed. Knickers. Trousers. After she was done leisurely sliding her feet into a pair of killer heels she pulled from her handbag she stood up, took Harry's wand out of his hand, and tucked it down into his trouser pocket. "If you two could stop measuring one another's equipment, perhaps we could get on with things? Draco? You were about to tell me something when Harry came by?"

"Goyle has the stone. And the cloak. He murdered Weasley. We're not working together. And I have no idea where he went."

"That's easy enough," Hermione said. She slipped her hand into his pocket and pulled out Weasley's deluminator. "This ought to do the trick."

"You want me to extinguish the lights?" Draco asked. Maybe he'd miscalculated that bewitched sleep and fried part of her brain.

She smiled. "It's not just a light putter-outer," she said. "It's a homing device. You want to get to Goyle, so you'll hear him if he says your name. Then you can apparate us all there."

"And why do you have that?" Potter demanded.

Hermione hooked her arm through his. "Not now," she said. "Draco has to listen for his name."

"Someone's still out there with the wand," Draco said.

Hermione picked up her handbag, hooked her other arm through his, and said, "Let's handle Goyle first, shall we? You just side-along us to wherever he happens to be."

This seemed like utter madness, but Draco held the deluminator in his hand and waited. And waited. And waited. And then –

_… stupid Malfoy's been sleeping with that bint of Potter's, so I just shoved my wand into her head and – _

Draco side-alonged them all to Goyle before he could say anything more.


	20. Chapter 20 - Enough is Enough

Selwyn's Inn had been a reasonably pleasant place to stay. Sure, the carpets were a bit worn, but the sheets were clean and the staff happy to bring a man whiskey even Draco couldn't sneer at. The dive Goyle had opted to hole himself up in was several rungs below Selywn's. Perhaps an entire ladder's worth of rungs. It didn't bother to have carpets, and when Draco apparated himself in, along with Harry Potter and Hermione, his feet stuck to the floor.

He didn't want to think about what substance had dried to leave that tacky residue.

The floor was sticky, two half-filled glasses sat on the table, and cobwebs heavy with dust hung in all the corners. The curtains were drawn, but instead of giving the place a feeling of cozy privacy, the covered windows made it feel close and dark and humid in the way of a swamp. Fetid, Draco thought to himself as he took in the room. If ever a place deserved to be called fetid, it was this.

Goyle jerked back at the crack of their arrival, turning from a short, older man with narrow eyes. Draco had the bad feeling he ought to know him, but he'd met so many despicable characters in his life they all tended to run together like bad apples turned into equally bad applesauce.

"Petrif – , " Goyle began, leveling his wand at them.

"We'll have none of that," Harry said. "I think you have something which belongs to me."

"I don't know what yer talking about," Goyle said with a defensive sneer.

Potter's body binding spell was far more effective than Goyle's, and Hermione nimbly rolled him over from where he fell and reached down into his trouser pockets. She pulled out first the cloak, which she handed to Potter, then a small, unremarkable black stone. If this was the fabled resurrection stone, Draco wasn't impressed. Something that powerful should glitter, or glow, or do anything other than sit there passively in Hermione's hand.

On the other hand, her response to the thing was pretty telling. She stared at it, and her lower lip started to quiver. "We could," she began.

"Don't," Potter said.

"Just once," she said.

"It won't really be him," Potter said. His mouth tightened in a grim line. "I want to see him too, but you know it's a trap. Play with Death, and you just attract him."

Her whole body seemed to shake. Harry Potter pulled out a small wooden box carved with enough runes the whole thing seemed to writhe and opened it up. He held it out toward Hermione and, with a sharp twist of her head so she couldn't see the stone, she dropped it in. Potter closed it up and shoved it away. Hermione wiped her eyes, and her shoulders straightened. Whatever moment of weakness she'd felt was gone.

"Well," Draco said briskly. "That's that. All done and tidy, and I think we should be on our way." The body bind curse was already fading. He could see one of Goyle's feet twitching, and he wanted to hustle them out of here before the worthless arsehole decided it was sharing time.

Hermione gripped her handbag and looked down at the fallen Goyle. "Murderer," she said, and the disgust in her voice made even Draco take a step back. She swung her foot at Goyle's ribs, and a loud crack suggested she'd broken something. She smiled and kicked him again. "You wanted these toys enough to kill for them, but you don't know how lucky you are to just end up a little stiff for a few minutes. Most people who go after the wand end up in a grave."

"Take him to the Ministry?" Potter said, but the suggestion seemed a bit half-hearted at best, and Draco snorted. The Ministry had hired him. If Potter thought the Ministry would do more than set him free to chase after them again, he was an even bigger fool than Draco thought. Potter met Draco's eyes at that snort, and for a moment, they were in perfect sympathy with one another.

"We should go," Draco said, his eyes on the twitching foot. Now Goyle was moving one hand as well. Nothing good would come of staying here. "Just obliviate them and be done with it."

Hermione nodded, but as she began to rise back onto those endlessly high heels, the spell holding Goyle broke, seeping away into the dirty cracks of the floor. Draco pulled his wand, but Goyle already had his own out, pointed squarely at Hermione.

Draco's night – already not going well – got a lot worse.


	21. Chapter 21- A Just Reward

Goyle held his wand on Hermione. Draco pointed his at Goyle. Potter took a step back and leveled his own weapon at the man still on the floor.

"I think this is what people call a stalemate," Draco said.

"Oh, but it's not," Hermione said. "I have something Gregory wants."

Goyle began to smile. It was a hideous thing and spoke of poor dental care and too many cigarettes, but that wasn't what concerned Draco most. What worried him was the cool pleasure that slid through all of Hermione's words. He knew her well enough to be afraid. Goyle, naturally, did not.

"You've got the wand," he said. "Hand it over."

"I'm going to have to reach down into my handbag to get it," Hermione said. "Do you think you can hold off cursing me long enough for me to do that."

"I ain't nobody's fool," Goyle said. "You just put that pretty leather bag on the floor and slide it toward me with your foot."

"I really don't think you want her to do that," Potter said.

Goyle sneered. "You don't think I'm going to trust her to reach into her bloody bag and pull out the Elder Wand, do you?"

Potter shrugged. "On your own head it be," he said, "but she's got an undetectable extension charm on that thing, and more than one nasty trap inside it."

Goyle did not appear to be impressed. "Jus' slide it over," he said. "I'll be the judge of that."

Hermione smiled, bent down slowly, and set her handbag on the floor. The line of her leg as she slid it toward him was long and lean and everything Draco appreciated in a woman's limb. He hoped it wouldn't end up limp and lifeless on the floor before the night was over.

Goyle squatted down, his eyes still on them, one hand holding his wand with a near-death grip. Well, Draco couldn't blame him for that. Potter did have a history of solving problems by disarming people. He reached the other hand down into Hermione's bag without looking and felt around. His face went from smug pleasure to confusion. He pulled out the pair of hiking boots Hermione had used in the Forbidden Forest, looked at them with fury, and threw them across the room.

"I paid good money for those at Harrods," Hermione said, narrowing her eyes. "Taking the wand in no way means you have license to destroy my things."

Goyle's mouth twisted in a sneer, and he pulled out flats and tossed them across the room as well, then a book on the best tourist spots in Bulgaria, then a pack of cigarettes. No wand.

"How much of yer crap do you have in here?" he demanded.

"I told you she has an extension charm," Potter said.

"A girl likes to be prepared," Hermione said.

"What the -!" Goyle pulled his hand out of Hermione's back. Blood dripped from one finger, which seemed to be missing the tip. He sucked on it and stared at the lot of them, angrier by the minute.

Hermione wrinkled her nose. "Now I'm going to have to clean," she said. "And blood is so hard to get out."

"What the hell do you have in there, bitch?" Goyle demanded.

That was too much. Holding a wand on them was fine. That was just business, and Draco'd held enough wands on enough people in his time to understand that sometimes, if you played at the edge of the law, that was necessary. Calling Hermione a bitch was something completely different. Unacceptably different. "There's no reason to be vulgar," Draco said. He frowned. "She told you she'd get it out for her, and Potter warned you she had traps in there. You really ought to have listened to them."

"Bugger off, Malfoy."

Draco shrugged. He'd heard that more than a few times in his life. It had lost its power years ago.

Goyle shoved the bag back toward Hermione. "You get it out," he said. "_Bitch_." That last bit seemed to be directed at Draco as much as it was at Hermione, and Draco felt his irritation grow. This had been a very bad night. He'd had to feel up Potter's arse, see Hermione threatened, hand over the cloak he had rightfully stolen, and now this imbecile was determined to descend to schoolyard taunts.

Hermione squatted down, reached her hand slowly into her bag, and closed her fingers around _something._

Draco expected her to fling a bit of flash powder or Peruvian darkness up into Goyle's face. That would let them get away, no foul no harm. Whatever she claimed, she'd have told him if she had the wand. She wouldn't have led him up to Dumbledore's tomb. Not if she already had it.

She pulled out a wand knew at a glance, sharply said, "Avada Kedavra," and Goyle fell, the look of shock still on his face when he hit the floor.

Draco looked at the Elder Wand, at the body on the floor, and all he could say was, "Shite."


	22. Chapter 22 - Draco's Solution

After Draco's "shite" came, "You killed him." She was going to end up in Azkaban, and what would his life be then? Nothing.

"He threw my shoes," Hermione said. "And left a fingertip in my bag." She tucked what had to be the Elder Wand into her waistband and began accioing her things. Draco pursed his lips and looked first at her, then at Potter. Most people would have said both of the pair seemed coolly unbothered by her use of an Unforgivable. Potter was almost fussily checking to make sure he still had the stone and the cloak, and Hermione was repacking.

Draco wondered what it was she had in there that had bitten off part of Goyle's finger, but decided it might be better not to ask, especially since he could tell neither of them were as collected as they seemed. A childhood of watching Potter let him know the wretched man was barely controlling his shaking and the way the corners of Hermione's mouth pulled just the smallest bit tight gave her away as well.

"How long have you had that thing?" he asked.

"The Elder Wand?" Hermione glanced up at him, her brows going up in an amused expression Draco knew all too well from his own mirror. "I've been keeping it at the shop – no one expects a book store to have weapons under the counter – but the day you came 'round I put it it my handbag for safekeeping. It's been there since."

Draco had to smile at that. She had played him for a fool, and he should be furious, but all he felt was admiration, tinged with a horror of what came next. He couldn't let her go to Azkaban. He couldn't.

The other man on the floor managed to get his mouth free of the binding spell. Honestly, that had been sloppy work. Couldn't Potter manage to do anything properly? "You'll hang for that," the man said. "Unforgivable means a trip straight to Azkaban, war heroine or no, and I saw the whole thing. I did. I'll – "

"Obliviate," Hermione said calmly, pointing the Elder Wand at him.

His tirade cut off, and he looked about him in confusion. "What's going on," he asked.

"Obviously, you came in on Goyle and I having an argument," Draco said in the most condescending drawl he could manage. Killing someone else in cold blood was right off the table and he was taking control of this little play back right now. "Have you lost what little brain you have?"

Hermione looked at him, brows raised. Potter, however, got it at once. "How noble," he said. His mouth twisted. "Is this how you repent for your sins, Malfoy?"

"Get her out of here," Draco said with disgust. Why did Harry Potter always have to be around for the most important moments of his life? "But be a doll, Hermione, and obliviate that idiot with the super wand again before you go. If he's going to be an eyewitness, it would be a bit easier without you two here complicating things."

Hermione set a hand on his arm. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Sure as taxes," he said. Which, assuming you had the wit to hire a halfway decent – or perhaps halfway _in_decent – accountant, wasn't really that sure at all. "Two things certain in this world, sweetheart. Death and taxes."

She leaned close, and he could feel her breath against his cheek. "I'll see you on the other side," she said softly.

"How romantic," Draco said.

"Well," she said. "I think you might have a tiny bit of magical working you'll want to explain to me. A sleep spell Goyle could never do, for example."

He cupped her face with one hand. "I'm sure you can think up some excuse for my misdeeds," he said, then, Potter be damned, he leaned in and kissed her. Her arms wrapped around him, and for an all too brief instant, he was in a perfect place, free of worry and ugly history and all the dull shadows of the gutter. Then Potter coughed, and the moment passed.

"I'm sure I can," Hermione said, a bit breathless. Well, he was a bit breathless too. "Don't forget me."

"In prison?" Draco asked. "I doubt I'll think of much else." He tipped his head toward the man on the floor and, with a melancholy smile Hermione pulled the wand again, walked to the door, and, the last Draco saw of her was her second obliviation spell.

Avada was too much, of course. He didn't plan to send himself to prison _forever_ for her. But an overdone cutting spell would get the job done – not to mention explain why Goyle was missing a bit of one finger. Draco released the body bind on his witness, sent a rather redundant sectrum sempra at Goyle's corpse, and waited for the outrage to come.

"What's happening here," the man demanded.

Draco looked at him with unfeigned contempt. "Don't you know?" he asked. "Thanks to Goyle's idiocy, some vagrant just ran off with all three of the Hallows." He let loose another slice for good measure. "You walked into what we might call a heated debate on the matter, then tripped over your own two feet."

The man scrambled up, pulled his wand, and kept his back to Draco as he made his way to the fireplace and the floo network. He tossed in some floo powder and demanded that someone in this fleabag hotel get an Auror. "My friend, Gregory Goyle, was just murdered!"

Draco snorted. Goyle wasn't the sort to have friends. Then he sat down and waited for the Aurors to arrive.


	23. Chapter 23 - Epilogue

**Five Years Later**

Draco Malfoy brushed dust off his sharply pressed trousers and examined himself in the mirror. His solicitor stood a few feet behind him, wringing his hands, but Draco didn't plan to be hurried. He'd lost weight in prison, but the angular result suited him. If he were paler than looked good on most people, well, his coloring had always been fair and too much time in the sun led to nothing but skin cancer. He patted his hair and turned back to face the apologetic, terribly expensive man waiting to lead him out of the Ministry and back to his life as a free man.

"I think you'll find this has rather redeemed you in the eyes of the public," the man said, his words falling nervously over one another in their eagerness to impress. "Draco Malfoy, former Death Eater – "

"I was a child," Draco said tightly.

"Right," the man said. "As I was saying, Draco Malfoy, former Death Eater was a man no one wanted to do business with."

That was patently false. Plenty of people had been willing to do business with him. Not, perhaps, the most upstanding citizens, but who didn't have a skeleton or two in his closet?

"But Draco Malfoy, the man who thwarted a no-good crook who was stealing national treasures from a hero? Now that's a person to be reckoned with."

"National treasures?" Draco asked. He'd been a bit cut off from information in Azkaban. His experience of the past five years had been an arrest that included a predictable amount of violence, an inept mediwitch setting his broken arm, and a trial that happened so quickly he'd barely sat down in the courtroom before he was declared guilty of murder with extenuating circumstances and hustled off to Azkaban. After the initial rush of the arrest and the trial, his life had settled down into a very boring routine. He'd gotten up. Read one of the very dull books Azkaban had to offer. Eaten the very bad food. Gone back to sleep. How the incident with the Hallows had played out in public opinion – even that it _had_ played out in public opinion – was news to him.

"National treasures," his solicitor confirmed. "All three the private property of Harry Potter. He was _most_ grateful you captured the thief, despite the regrettable loss of life."

"Most grateful," muttered Draco. He just bet he was. He blinked a few times, then asked, "How, exactly do all the Hallows belong to Harry Potter."

His solicitor smiled the bright grin of a man eager to share what he knew. "The late professor Dumbledore willed the stone to him," he said. "The cloak was a family heirloom. And he won the wand in fair combat from, well…" The solicitor paused, suddenly realizing that perhaps this was a slightly awkward moment.

"From me," Draco said. "Yes."

"Yes," his solicitor said, then, surely eager to be done with this horribly awkward part of his day, added, "Are you ready to go?"

Draco supposed he was. It wasn't as if he wanted to linger at the Ministry. It was nicer than Azkaban, certainly, and he'd taken a deep breath when he'd emerged from the floo into the less damp quarters of the processing office, but it was still a place he disliked and one that had sentenced him to spend years of his life locked away. What led him to drag his feet wasn't a desire to linger here. Rather, it was a fear that out _there_, out where the world awaited him, was no one. Hesitation put off the certainty of loss.

Still, he couldn't stay here forever, so he squared his shoulders and said, "After you."

The solicitor opened the door, and Draco stepped out into a bright atrium. Sunbeams spilled from windows set high above, all cunningly wrought with magic to be ever gleaming. It puddled on the floor in front of him, a sea of light.

And there on the opposite shore, waiting for him, stood Hermione Granger.

** ~ The End ~**

**. . . . . . . . .**

**_A/N – Thank you for coming along on this ride. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you. Thank you for giving me the gift of your time and your comments. They are treasured._**


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